Tom Cruise Trained With a Baboon for 'Rock of Ages'

A shirtlessTom Cruise channels his Rock of Ages alter ego, Stacee Jaxx, in W‘s June issue, which he also covers.

Here’s what the 49-year-old actor had to share with the mag:

On singing and dancing as a kid: “You know what? I did the scene from Risky Business around the house. I would sing Bob Seger — my mother worked, my sisters were out, and I’d turn the music up. I learned how to dance watching Soul Train. I noticed that if a guy could dance, he’d get a lot of attention and girls would want to dance with him. I worked very hard at imitating those moves.”

On musicals: “[My wife] Kate loves musicals. She sings and dances, and we kind of went through the history of musicals together. And Suri loved Hairspray. With kids, you watch everything over and over; I watched Hairspray 15 times with Suri. I thought Adam Shankman did a great job directing the movie, so I arranged to meet him and said, ‘Where’s our musical?’ He came back and said, Rock of Ages.’ We went and saw it in L.A., and for me … I didn’t know how to play the character like that. I had to find my own Stacee Jaxx.”

On preparing for the role: “I needed to find out if I could really sing! Ron [Anderson, formerly a vocal coach for Axl Rose] came in and worked with me. And then I had to learn how to play guitar. I’m very good at air guitar – and air drums – but I had never played an actual guitar. After working for weeks on Stacee’s technical skills, I was thinking about the character, and I said, ‘You know what? I need a monkey.’ Adam said, ‘What the f— are you talking about?’ And I said, ‘I’m serious – I need a monkey’ [laughs]. When Stacee’s not onstage, he’s kind of sad. And I thought, This guy has to have a monkey that’s his best friend. Adam found this baboon. He sent me the baboon’s audition tape, and I said, ‘The baboon’s name has to be Hey Man’ [laughs]. Stacee Jaxx doesn’t work without Hey Man.”

my co-worker’s step-aunt makes $84 an hour on the internet. She has been fired from work for six months but last month her pay check was $15792 just working on the internet for a few hours. Here’s the site to read more CashLazy.c om

@Pretty Ka, L Ron Hubbard supported apartheid in South Africa so we pretty much are.

lucy

Adam lambert

Jane

Tom…darling…. you are too old and trying wayyy to hard in this. I think you are trying for an Oscar nomination for this one, and it is coming off comical. There is no way he is going to get high praise for this role.

https://twitter.com/#!/lindsaylohan LINDSAY LOHAN WILL WIN OSCAR

Nice Go Tom! He is a hoot

Jenna

Wow – what a match: weird guy in an even weirder movie!

LOL@idiots

he will get an Oscar, I have seen the movie. The other performances are going have a tough time beating his “pour some sugar on me” stage performance. I freaked out.